Introduction

Hailed by fans as the “voice of the North,” Catherine Cookson returned time and time again to the area around England’s River Tyne in her more than 100 novels. In a writing career that spanned the aftermath of the Second World War, the rise of the welfare state, second-wave feminism, sexual revolution, and Thatcher’s booming Heritage Industry, Cookson used the setting of England’s industrial North East to explore class and gender conflict and the effects of poverty, illegitimacy, and violence on its men and women. In the years following her death in 1998, fans on Cookson-related websites claimed that her stories of women overcoming hardships had “saved” their own lives, while the museum and trails that make up “Cookson Country” continue to attract thousands of tourists a year, attesting to her legacy as a champion of women and the working class in England.